Professor, Students Present Research in Chicago

Henrik Schatzinger, assistant professor of politics and government, and three of his students presented new research projects at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) April 11-14 in Chicago. The MPSA is the largest regional political science conference with close to 5,000 participants.

Schatzinger presented “Lobbying and Government Contracts: Why Some Organizations Receive a Bigger Return on the Investment than Others,” with his co-author John Schmidt ’14, a major in Ripon’s Department of Politics and Government. The study explores the connection between lobbying efforts by organizations and federal contracts. Their analysis finds both lobbying expenditures and the intensity of the organization’s focus on specific relevant federal departments to be powerful predictors of the amount of money received by the organizations in the form of government contracts. Businesses in the defense and agriculture industry are particularly successful at targeting their federal departments.

Reshma McHale ’14 and Abigail Quackenboss ’16, both politics and government majors, presented their own research at the MPSA. McHale introduced her study “How Presidents Respond to Rising Political Polarization Within Inaugural Addresses,” while Quackenboss presented the results of her study, “Social Media: The Analysis of Tweets from the 2012 Wisconsin Gubernatorial Recall Election.” Schatzinger supervised both students during their research process. Quackenboss stood out as possibly the only first-year student presenting at the conference.

To learn more about Politics and Government at Ripon College, click here.

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Posted April 22, 2013 in Faculty, Student.

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